Imagine that, cities doing what need to be done to bring themselves back. Could someone educate the political class around here that it is their responsibility, not any one else’s, to do what it takes to bring cities back.

After all, our cities brought themselves back - by attracting new businesses, tightening their budgets, fighting crime, cleaning up their streets, improving local services, developing their waterfronts and in general making themselves good places to live.

DOOMING OUR CITIES - New York Post

March 5, 2008 — UH-OH: Here we go again. The so-called federal urban agenda - a set of ideas and policies that helped bring American cities to their knees in the 1960s and ’70s - is back on the front burner as a way to “save” American cities.

Sen. Barack Obama has pledged to create a White House Office of Urban Policy to “develop a strategy for metropolitan America,” while Sen. Hillary Clinton has called for a $300 million urban agenda to address crime, education and health-care issues.

Problem is, the comeback of great American cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, etc.) has occurred over 25 years of federal neglect - 25 years without classic Democratic programs like urban renewal or public-housing construction. Surely there’s a connection.

After all, our cities brought themselves back - by attracting new businesses, tightening their budgets, fighting crime, cleaning up their streets, improving local services, developing their waterfronts and in general making themselves good places to live.

It wasn’t a president who rezoned hundreds of acres of derelict land in New York’s former industrial areas, or beautified Chicago by restoring the lakefront while planting trees and flowers the length of the city, or rebuilt downtown Los Angeles. All these achievements were local, not federal.

Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, now president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, sums it up: “Cities have created their own superior urban policy - far superior to anything from the federal government, which long ago lost its way on urban matters.”

Sure, plenty of urban problems remain. But what urban problem has ever been solved from Washington - unless you count the staggering welfare dependency eased by the Clinton-era welfare reforms?

There are things cities need from Washington - lower taxes, far fewer unfunded mandates and far less red tape in the handful of federal programs that are productive for cities. In other words, cities need less federal interference and a lowered federal financial burden.

As it is, the feds set their own priorities - safe drinking water, for example, or lead abatement, or Medicare - and then impose their own one-size-fits-all requirements on cities and states without providing enough money to cover the costs. Worthy as the goals may be, the locals need flexibility (and/or funds) to do the job right.

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